Fairytale Romance
by Umei no Mai
Summary: Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier, from the bloody mountains of medieval Wallachia to the busy streets of Washington DC and beyond.
1. Hope

This is a tribute to darth_stitch over on Ao3, whose series 'Two Boys from Brooklyn' -among others- introduced me to the hilarious and adorable 'count buckula' tag.

**Fairytale Romance**

Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier.

* * *

Once upon a time, in a small Wallachian village overshadowed by a castle, there lived a girl. She worked hard to care for her parents and siblings, baking bread and making cheese. She was considered beautiful, for though her hair was brown, her skin was fair and her eyes as green as emeralds. She was also kind, gentle and true, and many wished to marry her, but she would have none of them for her heart was given to a soldier in the service of the boyar.

However it was a harsh time, a time of war against the Ottomans, and the girl had caught the eye of the boyar who owned the castle that overshadowed the village where she dwelled.

On day the boyar decided he could wait no longer and summoned the girl to his castle.

"Girl," he told her, "I would have you as my own. I will dress you in silks and gold and your sons shall be my heirs; what say you?"

"My lord," the girl said softly, "you honour me, but I beg of you not to set aside your wife for me. I am nothing but a farmer's daughter and I am promised to a soldier; I am not worthy of you."

The boyar was unaccustomed to being denied and his anger was great, but he allowed the girl to leave. He had been called to war by his prince and would take his soldiers with him; there would be time enough to punish the girl for her impudence when he returned.

So the boyar went to war with darkness in his heart and the soldier who loved the girl served him honourably and well. However the prince of Wallachia called upon Darkness to secure his victory against the Ottomans and Darkness answered him. The boyar saw this and realised that he too could call upon the Darkness, and resolved to do so that he punish the girl who had spurned him.

The war ended with the son of the prince assuming the throne in his father's stead, honouring all who had fought for him. The soldier was afforded particular honour, for he had distinguished himself with his strength, honour and skill. His boyar also rewarded him, placing him in command of his forces, for he did not realise that this soldier was the beloved of the girl who had refused him. Then the new prince returned to the capital and the boyar and his soldiers went home.

Upon returning the boyar went at once to a deep, dark cave beneath the mountains and called upon the Darkness there, crying,

"Darkness that my prince called upon, answer me! I would make a deal, for I have been wronged!"

The Darkness answered him, "Boyar, who has wronged you? Tell me and I will devour them, for a price."

The Boyar said, "Darkness, the woman I desire above all others has refused me for a simple peasant! I want her to suffer and die for her presumption!"

The Darkness laughed and asked the boyar, "Who is this woman?"

The boyar said, "She bakes bread and makes cheese in the village beneath my castle."

The Darkness laughed again and said: "Bring the first bread and the last cheese she has made to the last boggy hole tomorrow and she will not live another day."

So the next morning the boyar sent a servant to buy the first loaf of bread the girl had baked that morning and the last cheese she had made, then he took them down into the caves and set them down beside the dark, muddy pool at the very bottom of the cave. He left them there and returned to the castle, pleased with his vengeance.

Meanwhile the soldier had proposed to his beloved and she had accepted him, delighted that he still lived and had been so greatly honoured by the new prince after the war. But when evening came a swarm of bats like living shadows poured from the caves and attacked the girl, carrying her off before her beloved's eyes.

The soldier recognised the Darkness that had stolen his beloved away and ran after it, taking up arms that he might win her back. He battled his way into the depths of the mountain, but he was too late: the Darkness had taken his beloved and she lay cold and near death in the mud.

Enraged, the soldier confronted the Darkness: "Who are you, to take from me my beloved and bride-to-be? Return her to me!"

The Darkness laughed at him and said: "By first bread and last cheese this girl is mine: your own boyar gave her to me for refusing his advances, to suffer at my hands and perish. Her death will nourish me and her soul shall be forever mine!"

"You cannot have her!" The soldier said at once, though he was shocked by the betrayal of the lord he had served so faithfully all his life. "Take me instead! Only spare her!" He set aside his weapons and bowed his head, awaiting the Darkness's reply.

The Darkness was well pleased by such an offer, for the soldier was far darker and more corruptible a soul than the girl in his grasp, so he breathed life back into her and fell upon the soldier, devouring him utterly and leaving only his armour and weapons behind.

The girl awoke at once, saw the scattered armour and knew immediately that her beloved had given his life for her. She at once turned upon the Darkness:

"Return to me my beloved!"

The Darkness was most entertained by her presumption, so he answered her:

"I cannot: there is nothing left of his body to return to life. He died that you might live again, though your boyar gifted you to me by your first bread and last cheese."

"What of his soul?" The girl pleaded.

"His soul remains; he offered it in the place of your own and it is mine forever!"

The girl faced the Darkness without fear and asked, "Is there truly no way my soldier can be returned to life? For there is nothing I would not suffer to see him live again."

The Darkness at once saw a chance to gain a greater grip upon the world and steal even more lives, so it answered truthfully:

"There is a way I might secure his return: if I were to relinquish him he would be reborn into the world, though where or when that might be cannot be foreseen. He would not remember you until he set eyes upon you again, but he would truly be himself and never love another."

The girl protested, "But such a rebirth might take decades, or centuries! And the world is large; we might never meet! That is no bargain at all, for my life is short and I will soon be dead!"

"Ah, but that can be remedied, little girl," the Darkness wheedled her. "You will not die until you have found your soldier again, no matter how many lifetimes it takes for your lover to return to you."

The girl was no fool, so she asked, "What would such a thing cost me, oh Darkness? For all things have a price and what you offer me is costly indeed."

"Clever girl," the Darkness praised her. "It would be costly indeed, save that you have plenty of time available to you in which to pay. My price is that the lives of all whom you kill throughout your life shall be mine to feast upon and that you shall serve the heirs and successors of the boyar who betrayed you for me until your soldier finds and weds you. You shall also pay me in pain: the bindings that hold your soul in place shall burn like silver spikes through your shoulders for as long as you live."

The girl considered this and deemed it a price worth paying. "What must I do then?" she asked.

"Go up to the castle," the Darkness told her, "and fetch the boyar's heir, so that I might bind you to his service." He did not tell her that she was already greatly changed simply by having been restored to life, nor of the curse he had laid upon her the moment she agreed to his terms. He knew the girl was kind-hearted and gentle and would never kill if she could avoid it, so sought to force her hand.

The girl walked up to the top of the caves in the darkness, in which she could see as clearly as though it were daylight, and made her way up to the castle where the boyar was sleeping. The gatekeeper saw her approach and was afraid, for her skin was as pale as a corpse and her hair as white as bone. He barred the door in the gates against her, thinking her a spectre.

"Gatekeeper, let me in!" She called out, knocking on the door. "You know me; you have bought bread and cheese from me every day since I was a child! Please, let me in, for my beloved has been murdered!"

The gatekeeper recognised her voice but hesitated to open the door, instead opening a small hatch so he could get a better look at who stood without. But as soon as he looked upon her he fell down dead, his life stolen by the curse the Darkness had laid upon the girl's eyes, which now burned an inhuman gold.

The girl did not know what had happened, so she called out loudly and banged on the door, hoping to attract attention so that someone would let her in and discover what had befallen the gatekeeper. A sentry was soon roused, who hearing her voice thought nothing of opening the door and letting her in. He did not fall down dead, as his attention was all for the fallen gatekeeper and sounding the alarm when he discovered the man was dead. Meanwhile the girl entered the castle, seeking the boyar's young son. In her haste she did not notice the deaths of the servants and soldiers whose eyes briefly met hers, for they fell dead without a sound. It was not until she reached the boyar's suite and the boyar himself opened the door only to drop dead that she realised that something had been done to her.

"My lady!" She called to the boyar's wife. "Please, fetch me a mirror, so that I might look upon myself! I fear something terrible has been done to me!"

The boyar's wife was afraid, seeing her husband lying dead, so did not look upon the girl and threw the round silver mirror from the bedside table at her, which she caught easily. The girl looked upon herself and saw her golden eyes, pale skin and white hair and knew that the Darkness had marked her as its own. She also realised that it must have been her eyes to slay the boyar and the gatekeeper, because the sentry had not looked at her and had lived. So the girl turned her eyes to the floor, stepped over the boyar's body and explained to the dead man's wife all that had befallen her that night.

The boyar's wife was then even more afraid, but she did not dare oppose the girl in fear of being killed. Instead she woke her young son, blindfolded him and gave him to the girl so she could leave with him. Then, once the girl had left, she swiftly packed a few belongings, took her baby daughter and ordered the surviving servants and soldiers to take her away from the castle at once, so that she could appeal to the prince for aid against the monster her husband had called up. Upon hearing what the boyar had done and how their commander was dead, all the inhabitants of the castle and all of the villagers swiftly gathered all they could carry and fled into the night, fearing for their lives.

Meanwhile the girl carried the young boy who was now the new boyar down to the bottom of the caves, talking to him all the while of what had befallen her, how her beloved had sacrificed himself for her and how she had sworn to serve until the promise of the Darkness was fulfilled. She also told him of the curse, and how he must never, ever look her in the eyes. The young boyar believed the girl and, while he was afraid, he admired her courage and the selflessness of her soldier beloved. So when they reached the boggy hole at the bottom of the caves he agreed both to be bound to the girl and to bind his own heir to her once that heir was old enough.

So the Darkness bound the girl to the young boyar and both screamed in agony, for the girl felt as though great metal spikes had pierced her shoulders, sinking deep into her lungs, while the young boyar felt as though cold metal vines were wrapped around his heart. Both fell to the ground insensible and the Darkness left them there, sinking into the hole and under the ground to rest. It was now replete of pain and death and did not need to rouse itself in order to feed, so it settled down to sleep.

The next morning the girl and the young boyar left the caves to find the castle and village deserted save for some of the livestock, so they took up residence in one of the houses. The girl made bread and taught the young boyar to milk the goats. She also learned that animals were exempt from the power of her gaze, which was a small relief: as she told the young boyar, it would have been most inconvenient for her to have slain all the chickens.

A month after the deaths of the soldier and the boyar, the prince arrived at the castle with a small contingent of his men.

* * *

Ingeras knows he is a child, but he is still a prince. His men revere him for being the son of Vlad Draculea, the man who damned himself to save them from the Ottomans. Ingeras also knows that his father is not truly dead –those bats that still stalk him are not natural– but he does not speak of it.

However the story that has come to him from a recently dead boyar's wife and her shaken soldiers suggests that there is considerably more out there than just vampires to worry about; as if the potential return of the armies of the Ottoman Empire were not difficult enough.

The men have taken to referring to the girl as a Moroi, but Ingeras' personal tutor has confided that she sounds rather more like a gorgon of Greek mythology than any local entity. That despite repelling Mehmed's forces some power from the south-west may _still_ have managed to invade their beloved nation is not hopeful, but Ingeras knows his father follows him still. This girl, whatever she is, is young and new to her power. His father has slain armies; a boyar and half-a-dozen soldiers and servants do not really compare.

Upon arriving at the deserted village and castle Ingeras finds the young boyar –only a year or so younger than the prince himself– watching over a dozen goats and twice that many chickens in a field overlooking the road. Their guide is overjoyed to find the young lord still living, but everyone's mood plummets as the boyar tells the tale of how his father called upon evil out of petty spite and in doing so slew his own commander, damned his line until the wrongs done were righted and bound themselves to a being capable of slaying with a glance.

"Where is she?" Ingeras asks the boyar, Petru.

"Ileana?" Petru asks. "She's making cheese."

"Cheese?"

Petru nods solemnly. "She bakes bread and makes cheese; she always has. She's teaching me how in exchange for hunting lessons." He looks sad. "My lord father used her bread and cheese to get the devil to target her, but she hasn't stopped making it. She says the Darkness has stolen enough from her without giving it more victories."

"Does she eat then?" Ingeras asks as delicately as possible.

Petru blinks. "Of course she eats! She cooks too!"

Ingeras decides then that whatever this Ileana might have become, she is not undead. Cursed certainly, quite horrendously cursed, but still living. Meeting the girl in person only strengthens his resolve; he will have to keep a close eye on the situation, but maybe he can have Petru marry one of his female cousins and ensure that way that the boy's unnatural servant will not make trouble for his eventual descendants.

He knows his father will be keeping an eye on Pale Ileana as well, though he does wonder what he will make of her. Her beloved Iacov was a soldier who gained a personal commendation from Vlad Draculea for his courage and battle prowess against the Ottomans; he would even have been permitted to marry into the House of Draculesti had he not already given his heart to the girl he had since died for.

Ingeras resolves to keep an eye out for the reborn Iacov; the return of such a gifted and loyal soldier should not be permitted to go to waste.

* * *

It is far too easy for Ileana to lose track of time: she continues as she always has, baking bread and making cheese, the only change being that she does so in the cool cellars of the boyar's castle rather than in her parents' cottage. She also helps with the cleaning in the boyar's private rooms, the necessity of keeping her gaze firmly averted helping the returned servants to ignore her presence. Her grief numbs her, then her isolation makes it easier for her not to care. It is only when she realises that her current master is in fact Petru's great-grandson that she begins to draw herself out of her shell and quietly requests permission to travel. Serve she may have to, but it will be easier to find her beloved Iacov if she travels. He is after all a soldier right down to his soul for all that he has no love of war, so she will only find him by seeking out places where battles are being fought.

Her soldier may well have been born, lived and died twice over by now, while she whiled away the years in drudgery and service. It is a worrying thought. She hadn't even attempted to look yet!

Mihai is very happy to have his family's unnerving and ageless attendant far, far away from his new wife and infant son and gives Ileana permission to leave his lands and travel as far as she wishes for a full decade, after which she unfortunately must return for the binding of his heir. Ileana bakes bread on the morning of her departure, takes the first loaf and the latest of her cheeses down into the depths of the mountain and leaves them by the boggy hole.

She has not heard from The Darkness in nearly a century, but she knows full well it is still there. The pain in her shoulders persists, fading and spiking according to her movements, and for all her care people still manage to catch her eye every now and then. Parents in the village make a point of keeping their children well away from her and Ileana cannot blame them.

By the time she returns Ileana has learned five new languages, killed a large number of people –mostly on purpose and in self defence– and has learned a great many new ways of making bread. However she has not found Iacov.

It is more than four hundred years before she sees him again.

* * *

When Howard Stark was twenty years old, newly exploded onto the world stage and with more money than he had ever realised existed at his disposal, he went on a tour of southern Europe. He visited old castles, admired roman remains and was actually quite impressed by the feats of engineering accomplished by craftsmen of eras past. However what got him plastered across the front pages of the American newspapers was his purchase of an entire Romanian castle dating back to the twelfth century, which he had taken down, shipped back to the States and rebuilt in the Appalachians. The billionaire industrialist never mentioned the sour, aging boyar who had lived alone in the building with a pale, silent housekeeper, nor the ritual that had been a condition of him buying the castle for himself.

Now suffering a feeling of aching constriction around his heart every time he over-exerted himself, Howard Stark realised that he didn't understand women and never wanted to try; instead he dubbed the pale girl 'Anna' and shipped her back to the States along with his new castle. He didn't want to know what had been done to him –it wasn't remotely scientific– but it gnawed at him anyway. So he threw himself into his work after ensuring Anna had all the appropriate paperwork and full access to his accounts. She was now officially in charge of ensuring his homes were well-maintained and his laboratories well-supplied, which she did with grace and aplomb.

It wasn't until he was called into a police station over a mugging gone wrong a few months later that Howard found out about Anna's eyes, as she wore heavily tinted glasses at all times. The industrialist had believed her to be an albino and while initially eager to experiment, her assertion that their lethal effect only worked on people –'souled beings' she had said specifically– led to him dropping the subject very quickly. However he did design a whole range of shades for her in a variety of colours and styles, so as to ring the changes. The movie-star look was very popular, so nobody questioned it. Nor did they notice that Anna's shades were made of highly durable materials and actually locked around the back of her head so they wouldn't fall off.

That the commercial designs with normal temple cables were massively popular and sold like hot cakes was a bonus. It brought in more money, not that he needed it but income was income.

The following year Howard hired Edwin Jarvis to be his butler, as after the man's dishonourable discharge from the British army and marriage to the girl he'd technically committed treason for he needed something to do and he was an old friend. Unfortunately Howard really couldn't think of a sensible reason he could use to explain to Jarvis why he had an apparently-seventeen-year-old managing everything in his life not directly related to his business. 'She came with the castle' didn't really tell the whole story, but the truth just stuck in his craw: he was a modern man, a true believer in the power of science! Whatever had happened, there had to be a scientific explanation somewhere! Was it a chemical concoction perhaps that had changed her, or possibly a form of hypnotism to kill with a glance?

Howard couldn't face telling his friend the truth, that he had basically purchased a haunted castle and that the disturbingly-corporeal ghost had followed him home. So he stuck with the 'she came with the castle' explanation, which was sort-of true, and made sure Anna knew that all personal interaction with guests and other servants was to be handled by Jarvis. She was in charge of the financial side, of course, and of security –the recent HYDRA scare had persuaded Howard that unscientific or not, killer eyes were a useful trait– as well as assisting him in the labs. Anna was quite unnervingly resistant to all manner of different kinds of physical damage and recovered very quickly, so Howard had made very quick progress in certain areas now he had an indestructible assistant he could call on.

She never complained, which was actually creepier that the near-indestructibility. However Howard could put up with creepy when it came with knowledge of every European language in existence, half the Asian ones and a dozen or more African dialects. That modern cosmetics meant her pale skin could be softened to a more human shade and her hair dyed to reduce her visibility was what prompted Howard to find a way of applying tiny, flexible tinted lenses directly to her eyeballs. They darkened her irises to black and while Howard was sure they didn't need to be quite that strong, he was reluctant to fiddle because over-strong was better than accidentally dead.

By the time Howard joined the Strategic Scientific Reserve, Anna had been following him around as his secretary-interpreter for six months, her disguise making her blend in with the other women working for him. Well, sort-of blend: without all the white harshness and the aviator sunglasses, Howard could see that Anna was unexpectedly gorgeous in a starlet kind of way. It was good for his ego really, and highly amusing to see everyone dismiss her as his bit-on-the-side right up until he called on her to translate things for him.

Her ability to fade into the background was also very handy, as it meant she heard things he could use to get ahead in business. No matter how much he loved science, to keep doing science he needed money and that meant being a successful businessman.

After meeting Erskine at the Modern Marvels of Tomorrow Exhibition –which Anna did not attend as she was managing everything else for him– Howard realised that the gentle German might be the key to finding out what exactly had been done to Anna. So he cultivated the connection, leaving his assistant to all but run Stark Industries for him while he helped Erskine in the SSR and contributed to the war effort. Seeing Steve Rogers transformed from a five-foot weakling to a six-foot superhuman further convinced Howard that science could explain Anna's condition, though Erskine's death right afterwards at the hands of HYDRA infiltrators was a bitter blow: he'd lost both a friend and a scientific opportunity.

As the war in Europe escalated Howard went to the front in Italy to personally provide improvements and scientific assistance to the military. He did seriously consider taking Anna along, but the fact remained that while on the front he couldn't stay on top of running Stark Industries back in the States, which _had_ to continue smoothly due to all the military contracts. So Howard very reluctantly left Anna behind, hoping that his promise to ensure she could visit every last veterans' association on the planet after the war was over would keep her from being too angry with him for delaying her search for her 'long lost beloved'. Howard wasn't sure he believed in reincarnation, but the fact remained that Anna believed and despite technically being his servant she was very much a power to be reckoned with.

So Anna stayed behind, which Howard rather regretted by the time the war was over. She'd have been a wonderful foil to Agent Carter and would certainly have kept the Howling Commandoes on their toes. Her language skills would have seriously benefitted them too…

Howard, in his heart of hearts, mostly missed her for her cooking skills, perfect memory and usefulness as a lab assistant, in that order. That girl could make the best cheese sandwich _ever_.

* * *

James 'Bucky' Barnes had never wanted to be a soldier. He didn't like the idea of killing people; all he wanted to do was find work he enjoyed and a pretty girl to settle down with. But then he met Stevie, who despite being a scrawny little punk didn't know when to back down from a fight, then the war happened and he got drafted.

Basic was actually pretty fun: lots of new people to talk to, new skills to learn that he turned out to have a real knack for and getting promoted to sergeant for having more good sense than anybody else in the unit if you could overlook his cheerful willingness to follow crazy orders and make them actually work. He still wasn't looking forward to killing people though.

Unfortunately, as Bucky found out when he arrived in Europe, he was _good_ at killing people. Genuinely, undeniably, terrifyingly good. He could do more with a sniper rifle than anybody else on their side of the Alps –and possibly on the other side as well– was a natural woodsman despite being a Brooklyn boy, picked up languages quickly and made excellent tactical decisions under pressure. He did enjoy being a soldier despite the getting shot at, awful rations and having to sleep in awkward places, but he still didn't like the killing people bit. He could do it but he would have been much happier if he'd never had to pick up a weapon in his life.

Bucky also got a kick out of utterly bamboozling the entire unit by being fluent in Romanian and being able to mimic to perfection Agent Carter's cut-glass English accent. He didn't tell anyone about his Grandma Mina, who was even more English than Carter could ever hope to be despite living in the States for the past thirty years, or about how his parents Mike and Dot Barnes should actually be called Mircea Draculesti and Dorina Basarab, but had changed their names upon emigrating so as not to attract attention. Grandpa Vlad still insisted on calling Bucky 'Iacov', and seemed to find something about him highly amusing for reasons the old bat refused to get into.

[Vlad Draculea cannot believe that little Ileana's Iacov is actually his grandson now and is eagerly looking forward to their meeting. It is bound to be hilarious.]

* * *

After the end of the war, Anna takes a year to find suitable replacements for all the positions she occupies both in Stark Industries and in running Howard's household, then vanishes completely. Howard doesn't see or hear from her again for twenty-five years.

* * *

Arnim Zola never realises quite how many fortuitous coincidences go into making the Asset into the success that it is. Yes, the serum that gives Sergeant Barnes superhuman strength, resilience, speed and recovery time is a factor, but it is not even half the story. His heritage plays a part: he has a far greater capacity to recover from near-fatal damage than any ordinary mortal and Zola's serum, weak and flawed though it is, has plenty to work with. Without both the serum and his vampiric heritage the violent brainwashing techniques HYDRA employs would have reduced him to a drooling vegetable in under a month.

But Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is more than just Iacov Draculesti, grandson of the Impaler. If it were only the serum and his heritage working for him, his mind would have healed as the almost blank slate his handlers wanted, clean for them to write upon as they wished. But Iacov Draculesti was cursed to live over and over again and his soul remembered every lifetime, as Jeames, Diego, Kuba, Giacomo, Yakov, Seamus, Jaako, Sjaak, Kapel and Iakov who he was first. Those memories were not written in his mind, so when his brain heals and renews itself they imprint themselves upon the forming tissue, leaving echoes of past lives only unconsciously remembered.

The Asset speaks Russian, Italian, Spanish, Scots Gaelic, Dutch, Chinese, Finnish and Old German on various separate occasions, which somehow does not get questioned. His flexible and unpredictable fighting style is credited to his HYDRA trainers, though in all honesty they aren't too sure how it happened either. His ability to survive in any terrain and move like a ghost through both wilderness and urban environments is considered merely a sign of Zola's skill rather than an indicator of unknown factors at work.

That there is _nothing_ the Asset cannot do with a blade or gun and that he can ride a horse as easily as he can hotwire a car also goes unnoticed. In fact, the only 'glitch' which _does_ get both noticed and commented on is that any attempt at physical intimacy with the Asset will get a person's head twisted clean off, no matter if the person trying to approach it is a fellow asset, a guard, a handler or a boss. It's like some demented reflex that the Asset barely seems aware of; it is left alone because most of the bosses find it funny. The Red Room loses three prospective operatives to that reflex in a single month before they amend their protocols to make an exception for their _Zimniy Soldat_.

The Asset is kept in Russia until the fall of the USSR, at which point he is shipped to America and placed under the authority of Alexander Pierce.

* * *

Howard Stark is fifty two, happily married and expecting the birth of his child any day when he wanders out of his laboratory to find Anna baking in the attached kitchenette as though she's never left. It honestly terrifies him, because she doesn't look a day older than she did back in forty-six and he'd put her out of his mind so successfully he'd started to believe she'd never really existed. But there she is, pale and young as ever, and he knows right then that he can _never_ tell anyone that this women is one and the same with the classy dame who ran Stark Industries for him during the War. He just can't.

So he tells her that her name is Elena now; that she is 'Anna's daughter' and that she will be responsible for his son's upbringing and safety. Then he flees back into his laboratory and throws himself back into his work.

* * *

Maria isn't really sure what to think of the silent, efficient and distant Elena who Howard has hired out of the blue to help her and later care for the baby. She's very young and Howard claims she's the daughter of a former colleague, but if it wasn't abundantly clear that her husband can barely _look_ at the woman Maria would suspect he was having an affair. Or maybe Howard suspects that Elena is actually his daughter, which considering her young age is perfectly possible.

* * *

Anthony Stark grows up surrounded by science and nurtured on a diet of fresh, healthy foods and gory fairytales. Of course he doesn't _believe_ any of those stories, but they're incredibly inspirational and very exciting. His father mostly ignores him and that hurts, but at least he has Elena, his nanny, to turn to.

Then Tony turns ten, discovers that fairytales can be all too real and decides that his father is a bastard for not warning him sooner. He wants to blame Elena too, but he can _tell_ she loves him like a son so he can't hold onto his anger for more than a few days. So instead he starts looking into ways to loosen the bindings on her and free her from the curses tying her down. The constant ache in his chest just spurs him onward.

Fairytales have a surprising amount in common with programming language; Tony is soon hooked on the implications for creating artificial intelligence. Dum-E is proof of concept and far smarter than most people ever realise.

Tony hates his fifteenth birthday because that is when his father decides he no longer needs a nanny, since he's going to MIT this year. He immediately demands that Elena be his driver instead; he never regrets it, because _damn_ can that lady drive! It takes him three months to create a whole new drive and control system that enables her new vehicle to respond to her superior reflexes in real-time and by then Tony is a dedicated speed-freak.

It's intriguing really how Elena sails smoothly underneath everyone's radar despite constantly being around Tony Stark, who is always at the centre of media attention. Maybe it's because she's always walking just far enough behind him to be out of frame when the paparazzi are staking him, or how she manages to slide out of sight despite having stark white hair and wearing shades all the time. Tony isn't sure Stane even realises she _exists_, which is pretty cool actually and why he hasn't given the game away yet. Obie's fun, but Elena's special. He doesn't have to share Elena with anyone.

It's Elena who teaches him to pick locks, demonstrates domestic-terrorist chemistry to him in one of the labs and introduces him to alcohol. It's his best possible sixteenth birthday present, along with being taller than her at long last.

Tony is seventeen when he graduates from MIT, but his real achievement that year is working out a way to subvert the binding on her. Of course it requires a trip down some disgusting and dangerous caves out the back of the creepy castle his father brought back from Romania, but he can do that. He's done spelunking before.

The entity Elena calls 'the Darkness' is by far the creepiest, trickiest and most devious being he's ever had to hammer out a contract with, but he has Elena's first loaf of the day and a very nice goat's cheese she made last week which gets him off to a good start. He eventually manages to arrange an exchange with the shadowy being: as long as Tony is alive and in pain, any kind of pain, Elena is not bound to obey either the Darkness or either of the Starks. Tony also gets confirmation that her honey bun, whoever and wherever he is, is immune to her basilisk stare; that's the good news.

The bad news is that right after sharing the good news with Elena she bawls him out for being so stupidly reckless, then hunts down Howard and reads him the riot act for not letting her join him on the continent during World War Two. Tony discovers then that the most recent incarnation of his nanny's darling Iacov was none other than James 'Bucky' Barnes and that Elena –no, her name is _Ileana_– is furious that Howard kept her away from him. She storms out of the mansion that same evening and vanishes; Tony starts designing a facial recognition alert programme using old wartime photographs of the late Sergeant Barnes so he can help Ileana find her sweetie next time he shows up among the living.

He also hacks into Howard's accounts and transfers over a suitably-sized bonus to her for putting up with his dad's bullshit for so long.

Tony then throws himself into life in the public eye, because putting up a mask and getting constantly misunderstood by everyone _hurts_ but Ileana has earned a little me-time. He knows she'll come back; she's the only person he knows would never truly abandon him.

That he gets letters from her every few months is a reassurance he likes to think he doesn't need, but secretly really appreciates. That right after his father's death she shows up back at the house and stays until his twenty-first birthday is all the confirmation he needs, even though she leaves again right afterwards.

* * *

HYDRA has no idea who or what is picking off their agents in the United States, but they would very much like it to stop. It is all very well to say 'Cut off one head, two more will take its place' but when the people dying are the recruiters it makes things more than a little difficult.

* * *

A big part of why Tony likes Pepper is that she reminds him of Ileana. He tries not to think about the old saying that states that men marry women who remind them of their mothers, because it's embarrassing. Despite looking young enough to be his daughter Ileana's still his mother-figure and she's really the most kickass women on the face of the earth.

His facial recognition programme is up and running now, fully integrated into JARVIS's servers and with a special alert feature that connects directly to Ileana's Starkphone.

Ileana drops right off the grid at the beginning of 2009 and doesn't reappear until almost a year later, by which point Tony has an Arc Reactor in his chest and has become slightly obsessed with building Iron Man Suits. She drags him out of his laboratory and off to a ranch in the middle of nowhere for a horse riding holiday, which Tony actually enjoys despite complaining the entire time. He discovers that Ileana has a wickedly irreverent sense of humour and loves to laugh, neither of which he's really seen before.

Designing a 'clockwork horse' for her is a fun challenge, though he's not quite decided on the best way to make it fly yet. Fairytales are really far too much fun.

* * *

Mike Barnes isn't quite sure what to think of the apparently-teenage girl his father brought home last night, but she and his father are arguing in Old Romanian and the girl is utterly unafraid so he thinks this might be a good thing. He's not seen anybody poke his father in the chest like that since his mother finally died of old age a decade ago and the infamous Impaler can't seem to decide if he's infuriated or delighted by the girl's irreverence.

That she flickers like moths around the edges much like his father flutters like bats suggests that this is a _very_ old friend indeed. He's never seen a vampire so religiously attached to vintage sunglasses before though.

* * *

Tony had intended from the very beginning to have a suite for Ileana in Stark Tower, but getting it past Pepper was very, very tricky. Mostly because Pepper has no idea who Ileana is –she's Tony's special secret after all– which meant creating a whole swathe of suites for potential future guests to disguise Ileana's personal suite.

The only person who knows is JARVIS and Tony has devised a special secrecy code so that Pepper can _never_ get the AI to tell her about the immortal he inherited from Howard. JARVIS has never actually met Ileana, but he's vaguely aware of her existence because Tony talks about her sometimes in private. Inheriting Howard's old SHIELD files was interesting because sometimes there are glimpses of Ileana in the background; thoroughly disguised of course, but still there.

Tony has exactly two photographs of Ileana: one of the two of them sitting on the bonnet of the car he designed for her and another of her without her sunglasses that was taken with a remote control. That photo is posed very formally and looks about sixty years old due to being in black and white and Ileana wearing forties clothing, but it's the only image Tony's ever seen of her without her sunglasses and he loves that picture dearly. The original is in a vault somewhere, but he has a copy in his workshop alongside the other one, camouflaged amongst the rest of his clutter.

Keeping those photos off the internet is something he does out of respect; he has no idea how much longer Ileana's going to be around and she has enough going on without being hounded by SHIELD wanting to offer her a job or assholes like Ross wanting to use her 'for the good of America'. She's always taken good care of him, so he will take good care of her.

Needing to rebuild Stark Tower after the whole Loki mess just gives him a whole new opportunity to create a place Ileana can feel at home in.

Waking up in Tennessee after having his Malibu Mansion bombed by the Mandarin is a wonderful moment for Tony, because despite everyone believing him dead there is a letter with his name on it lying on top of his ruined armour. He may not have been awake for it, but Ileana was there when he needed her the most.

Which means all he has to do now is make her proud of him.

* * *

Ileana was on her ranch mucking out the stables when her Starkphone made a noise she'd never heard before. It was a triumphant fanfare, followed by a recording of a much younger Tony saying,

"Am I a genius or what?"

Shaking her head at the silliness, Ileana tugged off her gloves and pulled her phone out of her pocket then stopped dead.

The program open is one Tony installed nearly twenty years ago on her first prototype phone and has been automatically transferred over to each of her successive ones; a program she'd never actually seen in use before. She knew what it was; Tony had told her about it with that cautious enthusiasm he got when he was incredibly proud of himself yet was afraid he might have overstepped a boundary or ten. It was called 'Manhunt' and was keyed in to the face of James 'Bucky' Barnes, the latest incarnation of her missing Iacov.

Tony had explained that Manhunt worked by tapping into every last wireless network it came into contact with, leaving facial recognition software embedded in them so that if a sufficiently close match was made a signal would be sent to her phone showing her where and when the match had taken place. According to her Starkphone there were matches popping up one after the other, all in exactly the same place: one of the new SHIELD Helicarriers.

Ileana had always suspected that Manhunt's programming was fundamentally viral and this confirmed it, but she was too busy stripping off her overalls and pulling on one of the Kevlar reinforced formal dress suits Tony had made for her to really care. Her phone in her pocket, still happily pinging away as it tracked her Iacov's movements, Ileana the Pale took to the air in a flurry of death's head hawk moths.

Washington DC wasn't all that far away.

* * *

The Asset (Bucky?) [_Iacov, pay attention to your grandfather_] was leaving the Smithsonian when a repetitive pinging sound (sonar?) caught his attention. Glancing sideways, it (he) [_why is he laughing?_] noticed a young woman in office wear with white hair braided around her head (she looks like a fine dame) [_always respect women, my son: they make life worth living_] and wearing large, concealing sunglasses (shades). Her phone was making that irritating and persistent sound; it grated on the Asset's (That's not a name) [_Bucky isn't a proper name!_] nerves, making the fingers of his metal hand twitch. Then the woman looked up, slid down her sunglasses and _looked right at him_.

Gold eyes, bright as fire and wild as a tiger met his own and everything went sideways inside his head.

Data overload / What is The Mission? / Who / Where / Loss of Function / Handler?

[_Wasn't I falling out of the rigging a moment ago?]_

(Did someone get the plates off that truck that just ran me over?)

[_We are betrayed!_]

(It's so cold…)

[_Ileana? Beloved… Ileana!]_

The Asset crumples. Ileana catches him.


	2. Memory

And it won't leave me alone, so there's a new chapter!

**Fairytale Romance**

Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier.

* * *

_Milan in the Year of Our Lord 1515 was not a great place to be, Giacomo felt. There was the fact the Duchy had been taken over by the Swiss, who had put the young Massimiliano Sforza on the throne to do their bidding. Then there were the French advancing from the west, beating back the forces of the Pope and the Swiss._

_All in all, it was not a good time to be a soldier; Giacomo was pretty sure his luck would be running out soon. He'd survived the French being evicted from the city in 1512, the French getting it back and losing it again the following year and all the related political nastiness that had led to the city militia getting new commanding officers six times in under five years. Giacomo was just glad to be a carpenter's son, as it meant that none of the princes and kings cared that he'd technically fought on both sides of the war between the Pope and the French that had been dragging out for seven years. Nobody cared about the foot soldiers after all._

_He'd been lucky to make it to thirty-five; most of his friends hadn't and he'd probably be joining them in Purgatory soon._

_So when the orders come down from above he gets his gear together and marches towards Magnano with the rest of his unit, praying all the while that he will survive this battle and return home._

_It is almost dawn, after a night of constant battle, when Giacomo finally fails to duck fast enough and a French cavalryman splits him open from neck to waist._

Waking up after that is… unexpected. Giacomo blinks slowly, taking in how he feels _–shitty_ and utterly exhausted, but not like he's dying– and the fact that wherever he is, there's a wooden floor under the blankets and it's dark and _quiet_. Proper quiet, but he can smell cooking. Smells like… beef?

Unfortunately his legs are not cooperating and there is very clearly something badly wrong with his left arm, because he can barely feel it. Giacomo tries to shuffle himself into a sitting position and a door opens, revealing a young blonde with pale eyes holding a bowl.

Giacomo can't see what's in the bowl, but the smell wafting across the bare, bleak room is reassuringly meaty even though it's probably just broth.

"Is that for me, beautiful?" he asks hopefully. The smile and dip of the head as the woman walks closer is very encouraging, but Giacomo still has no idea where he is. Then just as he's about to take the bowl he gets a proper look at the woman's face and his jaw drops.

It's _her_; the angel that haunts his dreams. She's paler than he's ever seen her but he knows that rounded chin, those delicate cheekbones and that smile. She's the reason he married so late, and his best friend's widow at that; poor Maria had two small children and a baby on the way so he couldn't leave them to fend for themselves. Not Luca's kids. Luca had been his best friend after all, ever since they were both small themselves.

"I'm dead," he whispers, amazed and humbled, accepting the bowl with reverent hands and drinking deeply. It's good beef broth, rich and fragrant with herbs. This certainly isn't Hell but it doesn't look like Purgatory either; how can he have possibly deserved Heaven?

The woman crouches next to him, smoothing her apron over her knees and watching him sideways under her lashes. Maybe this _is_ Heaven, because Giacomo's idea of Paradise very definitely involves this woman.

He's about to ask, but he nearly cracks his jaw yawning right after finishing the broth and exhaustion rises like a tide, forcing him to settle himself back among the blankets before he keels over and cracks his head. He does manage to catch his angel's hand and press a kiss to her knuckles before passing out though.

* * *

Ileana hadn't been expecting James to speak Renaissance Milanese, but that wasn't exactly a problem; she had been in the Venetian Republic in the late sixteenth century and the dialects were mutually intelligible. The politics however had been antagonistic, which was why she kept her mouth shut; he still accepted the broth readily enough, which was a relief. Considering the documents she'd been downloading off the internet on HYDRA she hadn't dared put him on an IV, which meant she had to keep him hydrated the old-fashioned way, with broths and maybe soups later, if she thought his stomach was up to it. HYDRA hadn't fed their Asset after all; it would have interfered with their ability to put it on ice at a moment's notice. God only knew when Iacov had last used his stomach for more than just water.

He also needed a shower, a shave and better clothing, but those could wait. Hopefully the Old Prince would be back soon; he'd met her in DC before she followed her Iacov to the Smithsonian but he had detoured to the residence of the late Alexander Pierce in search of more in-depth documentation of what had been done to his grandson rather than join her in hunting down said grandson.

Considering James collapsed on top of her shortly after he met her eyes, she could have done with the vampire's assistance in hauling her soldier back to the apartment she had appropriated; well, that Tony had set up for her when she asked. Tony had very pointedly asked no questions at all, but JARVIS monitored the Manhunt programme so he already knew what she was doing.

Dealing with her swooning beloved had been tricky though; immortal and near-indestructible she may have been but she was only human-strong and topped out at five foot three. Hauling around a man with a metal arm who was just a hair less than six feet tall was not remotely easy for her; it had been sheer good luck that had enabled her to flag down a taxi before she dropped him.

She hadn't been expecting him to brush his lips across the back of her hand before passing out once he'd drunk his broth though. She just _knew_ she was as red as a tomato and her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped the bowl. She'd lost Iacov the evening before their wedding would have been consummated and after being tortured to death, resurrected a widow and cursed, any curiosity she might have had about sex had been very thoroughly dampened. But now she had her beloved back and she felt like a hormonal seventeen-year-old again, despite still being in near-constant pain.

That was probably going to get her into trouble; Iacov had _loved_ the fact he could fluster her so thoroughly, never mind that he pretended to be proper and gentlemanly in public. No matter how innocent the touch, the way he'd looked at her had always been heated and seductive and she'd been unable to quell the fiery blushes that inevitably erupted. Considering how social mores had changed and how much more contact was considered acceptable in public…

Oh yes, she was _definitely_ in trouble.

* * *

_Yakov Hanschonkoff was a proud Cossack. Like all Cossack boys he'd learned to ride shortly after he started walking and had started helping to provide for his family aged seven. It was traditional to do so, but they had needed it: the last three years of Yakov's childhood had been years of hardship and famine, even for a people who thought nothing of raiding their non-Cossack neighbours' villages when their own supplies ran low._

_When Yakov was fourteen he joined a mercenary unit with his friends, as soldiering was one of the few ways the Cossacks had of bringing in money. He loved riding and loved his friends and family, so it was no hardship to do so. Those who hire them are no better than those they kill, but Yakov is good at what he does and it pays well, so it means little to him._

_Getting hired by the Poles to invade Russia is hilariously ironic, but it pays well and none of the Cossacks really care that a few years ago it was the Russians paying them to invade Siberia or that in a few years' time they'll probably be being paid to raid the Ottomans again. Really, who cares so long as the money is good?_

_They call themselves the Lisowczycy, after their commander, following his death. They are no less skilled after losing him either; Lisowski was a cunning tactician and taught all who were so inclined how to see the battlefield like he did. Yakov may only be eighteen but he is a veteran and the men like him; he leads their small unit despite being almost the youngest in it._

_Then Yakov catches the same damn illness that killed his commander the previous year and dies within a week. He is barely nineteen and does not go quietly, raging and fiery to the bitter end. _

Opening his eyes to dark, warm quiet barely registers to the young Cossack. He's alive, he no longer feels like he's dying and that's enough. He has survived; everything else can wait. Closing his eyes, he goes back to sleep.

* * *

_Diego Martinez y Cruz has not heard his given name in nearly seven years. His fellow guerrilleros call him 'El Rojo', because when he joined their group he was red from head to foot from the blood of the Frenchmen he had massacred in their sleep in that summer evening of eighteen oh-eight. He barely talks to his fellow rebels and certainly doesn't care what they call him; all he lives for now is revenge, revenge for the death of his son and daughters._

_His eight-year-old son was gutted and left to die outside his home while his daughters were raped to death by the soldiers sent to 'pacify' the region. Diego had been out hunting (poaching) and will never forgive himself for not being home to protect his family. That night he slit the throats of every last Frenchman in the village, most of them in their sleep, then laid the bodies of his kin out in the church before gathering up the best of the weapons and picking a direction to walk in._

_El Rojo is unknown to the French; none of them have ever seen him, only his handy-work. His brethren speak of him only is whispers and riddles, fearing him as much as they admire him. It means nothing. Life has no meaning now, save in spilling the blood of those who stole away all his reasons for living._

_When he hears that the French have sued for peace and gotten it he walks off a cliff the very next day; suicide may be a mortal sin, but Diego knows he has killed too many and regretted it too little to enter Heaven anyway._

* * *

_Kapel was a mercenary, a former Jew who had converted to Lutheranism. He had served his emperor, Charles V, honourably in the war against France, yet met his end barely a year later when said emperor turned his attentions inwards and set about stamping out Lutheranism altogether._

_Kapel dies aged twenty-six, defending his home the Electorate of Saxony in the Year of our Lord fifteen-forty-seven._

* * *

_Jaakko was always proudest of the fact that he'd actually managed to survive his seventeen years of military service in the Swedish Army and retire. He never married, but both his younger brothers did so he had plenty of nieces and nephews to spoil. He eventually died falling through rotten ice seven years later, freezing to death even as he drowned at the respectable age of forty-two. _

* * *

_Seamus O'Neill was forty-five when Hugh O'Neill became The O'Neill and rousted the Clan to arms against the English. Being unmarried, unlike his elder and younger brothers who all had wives and children, Seamus was willing to agree to go to war on their behalf. He could keep an eye on his idiot nephews that way; Conn was only fifteen but he was a big lad and foolishly eager to get himself killed. So Seamus answered The O'Neill's call to arms and left his brothers' farm with two good ponies, a quiver of javelins and his late father's old sword._

_In the army Seamus learns to fire a musket, which he doesn't think much of as a weapon; inaccurate is what it is, and clumsy besides. He still learns to work with the thing, because it is required of him. Unfortunately. He is less clumsy than some, but would prefer a good bow._

_Seamus is felled by an unlucky shot to the neck at Clontibret, shortly after pushing his idiot nephew out of the way of a highly competent English cavalryman._

Seamus opens his eyes to dim, pre-dawn light in a very fancy but starkly empty room. Really _very_ fancy: there are large, clear glass windows behind fine linen curtains, the floor is wooden and completely smooth, the ceiling is high and the walls are painted a delicate shade of cream. There's no furniture and the only fabric in the room other than the curtains are the impossibly soft and clean-smelling blankets he's wrapped up in.

It looks like his Ma was right; he really _had_ gotten himself stolen away by the Sidhe in the end. It's better than being dead, though he'll miss his family.

It had always been a bit of a running joke-but-not-quite among family that Seamus was going to get snatched up by one of the faerie one day. He'd started having the dreams about the pretty colleen when he was thirteen and none of the neighbours' daughters had ever been able to match up with the vivid green eyes, creamy skin and shapely neck that haunted his sleep. He'd told his Ma about the dreams a few years later, just in case this was a girl he'd met when he was little that he was remembering, but she had shaken her head and reminded him of the tales of the Sidhe.

A lovely girl spending time with him in his dreams, speaking a language he didn't recognise yet still understood, could only be one of the fae. Probably not one of the regal and perilous Old High Fae, but still an entity that was dangerous to cross. His Ma had stopped suggesting he marry and settle down after that, which Seamus was grateful for. He didn't mind it, not really, and even though he had no children of his own he had dozens of nephews and nieces and cousins to dote on anyway.

It seemed his Faerie Love has decided him nearly getting himself killed was all she could take and spirited him away Underhill for the rest of eternity. Seamus can live with that.

There is a rattle from the door to his right and it opens, a woman gliding through it in a swirl of sunset purple and a tall, dark, grim man in a black coat striding in her wake. The woman's hair and skin are white as milk but her eyes are a vivid, vibrant green that he knows all too well.

"Colleen," Seamus says, before remembering that this is not some farmer's daughter but one of the Fair Folk. "Ah, my apologies, my lady; it was you brought me here, was it not?"

The women smiles at him, letting his familiarity slide. "It was," she agrees, her Gaelic accented in a way he's never heard before. "You aren't quite yourself yet, but you will adapt in time."

He's not sure what she means by 'not quite yourself', but isn't going to ask. Not such a fine and perilous lady who moves with the grace of a wolf. The man with her is staring at Seamus, his face blank; he turns and speaks to the lady in that language Seamus hears in his dreams, except this time he can't make out what the words mean. She answers in the same language though and whatever she says prompts the man to huff, twitch like a bird settling its feathers and stalk across the room and through one of the other doors.

The lady rolls her eyes fondly, closes the open door then sinks gracefully to the ground beside his nest of blankets. "Would you like some broth?" she asks.

Seamus considers the offer. On the one hand, Faerie Food was something his Ma had warned him about. On the other… he didn't want to leave. "Yes please, milady," he says.

The lady snorts gently, shaking her head. "None of that; please call me Ileana. I am not a lady."

Seamus knows he looks deeply sceptical. Her clothing is worthy of a princess and the Dark Man is most certainly a lord or a prince; he moves with the authority of one used to being obeyed.

She can definitely read his face because she smiles. "_He_ is certainly a lord; a prince in fact, the Dragon's Son." She says it so easily that Seamus almost nods before his mind catches up with his ears and he gapes.

"Son of a _dragon_?" he repeats, stunned. Ileana looks deeply amused by his amazement.

"Indeed, but prince and son of The Dragon or not, He is not _my_ lord. My lord is much younger, a Master Smith and far more playful and forgiving a trickster than my current companion." Seamus is relieved to hear it; since he's not going to be able to avoid being added to his colleen's household it's a weight off his mind to hear she serves someone a bit less intimidating than the warrior-prince descended from dragons. A young Smith is more likely to understand human things than any other sidhe.

Ileana rises to her feet. "I'll get you that broth," she says. "Would you like to bathe first?"

Seamus sniffs himself and decides that yes, he would. He smells _terrible_ and that's really not the impression he wanted to make on the woman of his dreams in their first face-to-face meeting.

* * *

Seamus is rather shyer than his Italian incarnation, but Ileana expects most of that is due to him believing her to be one of the Fair Folk. Which, to be perfectly honest, she might as well be. Certainly the Darkness that remade her is an ancient, cruel thing, worthy of those bloody stories that the Irish have always been so fond of. She isn't undead after all, and beyond that very specific category of creature humans are not very good at accurately categorising the things they do not understand.

It was interesting to explain the mechanics of a twenty-first century bathroom to a sixteenth century Irishman, but Seamus was very accepting of everything and paid rapt attention. His believing he was Underhill probably helped there; Faerie was supposed to be fantastical.

Even more interesting was that he didn't seem to notice his metal arm; it was like his eyes skipped over it or his brain refused to recognise it as anything other than normal. That might change after he'd washed and eaten, but for the time being Ileana is glad of the respite. Explaining the fully functional metal prosthetic in terms that particular incarnation would understand would be easier than most of the others –his firm belief in magic makes him pragmatic about things beyond his ken– but she needs a moment to come up with the suitable terminology to make sense of his situation. In Gaelic. Her vocabulary is probably lacking there; how do you say 'amputation'?

The Old Prince does not speak Gaelic and is sulking in the kitchen, perched on the countertop on the side of the fridge furthest from the balcony doors. He looks so much like a sulky bat when he does that, Ileana finds, that she simply cannot take him seriously.

"How long is this going to last?" Vlad III Draculea, former Voivode of Wallachia demands grumpily in Old Romanian, glaring at her with normally blue eyes darkened to blood red.

Ileana tilts her head sideways, eyes automatically dropping to the floor despite no longer being cursed with a murderous gaze for the first time in over five hundred years; her skin is also regaining a hint of its former colour. "I don't know; when he woke up day before yesterday he was Renaissance Milanese, now he is Irish Gaelic. I think his memories are coming back in waves as he sleeps, since according to modern science dreams are how the brain processes memories. So he is remembering each lifetime separately, filing it then starting again with a new one. It could take a few more days, or weeks." Feeding him in his sleep is tricky but not impossible, provided she sticks to broth.

She pauses to consider the situation. "I don't think it will take any longer than that –the serum enhances and augments _everything_, mental processing speed included– and the bargain was that Iacov would be 'truly himself', which suggests he will remember _everything_ by the end. How he will cope with all those memories is another matter; they have all come on him at once and he has no experience." Unlike us, she does not say. We two who have lived so long and learned ways to cope as the burden of memory grew slowly more onerous. We who have been worn down by anger and lifted up by love, healed by the grace of God –because if there is no God then we have no reason to keep trying– and so very jaded by humanity's constant sameness.

People are always people, even five hundred years and over twenty generations later. The surprises –like Howard Stark and later his son Tony, her dear Tony– are what keep her interested.

The Son of the Dragon bows his head. "I will stay with my grandson," he promises formally, "even should you take him back to your little iron lord."

"I will have to do that and soon," Ileana says quietly. "I do not for one moment believe that HYDRA have not tagged Iacov in some way and we have no idea what is going on inside his arm, or even what it runs on. Tony can scan it, remove any trackers, demonstrate how to care for it appropriately and show me where trackers need to be cut out of his body. After that, where we go and what we do is entirely Iacov's decision: it is his life that must be reclaimed after all, and I have time to wait for him."

"He loves you."

Ileana smiles sadly. "I hope he will still love me after he has truly comprehended the horror of what I have put him through out of selfishness." Immortality is a curse when you are one of a tiny handful so afflicted, and while Iacov is not immortal –or at least he wasn't before– he has lived and will remember many, many lifetimes. So much death and pain to lie in wait for him in the small hours of the night. She hopes for forgiveness, but it is a hope not a certainty.

The time they had together was pitifully small compared to what he has lived since and time does not heal at all; it simply gives you the opportunity to get used to living with the wounds. Healing and forgiveness are gifts, oft looked-for and seldom given, and should not be taken for granted.

* * *

_Jacques hates this war. He has been crouching in trenches near Ypres for over half a year now and all through the winter besides: it is utterly miserable and he cannot remember what being dry feels like. It is possible to move from trench to trench between the French Battalions without sticking your head out over the top, but they can't get in touch with their English allies without using the telegraph or scrambling out, scurrying across the mud and dodging the barbed wire, all the while hoping that the Germans can't be bothered to take potshots at you._

_When the telegraph line breaks _–_which is depressingly often– they draw lots to see which two poor saps get to grab a new spool of wire and lay it again. Because even if you do manage to lay the wire without getting shot, you then have to get _back _and while night-time does offer cover it also makes it harder to avoid the unexploded bombs lying in No-Man's-Land and triply hard to find the right trench._

_Jacques is huddled against the front wall of the trench and smoking a cigarette when he wrinkles his nose at a sudden awful smell. He takes another breath to try and identify it and then he's screaming as his skin and lungs burn and he can't **breathe** . . . _

He's shaken awake by a green-eyed _mademoiselle_ who feels so wonderfully familiar that he doesn't feel an ounce of shame for wrapping his arms around her and sobbing into her shoulder. She hugs him back, rubbing soothing circles over his spine as he breathes in deep, clean breaths and reassures himself that it was just a nightmare. He's about to ask where he is, as it doesn't look like a field hospital, but exhaustion shutters his eyes and the last thing he remembers is being tucked back under the blankets by small, kind hands and the faint whisper of a kiss against his forehead.

* * *

_Despite technically being born during the Twelve-Year Truce between the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire, Sjaak could not remember a time when his homeland was not threatened by war. At the time of his birth there had been the Bohemian Revolt, which was in actual fact a proxy war between the Republic and the Empire, then during his childhood there had been the seemingly never-ending siege of Antwerp, the Spanish trade embargoes, the various other sieges, the commercial raiding, the invasion of the Spanish-held Southern Netherlands and finally the alliance with France._

_It was the alliance with France to invade Spanish territories in sixteen thirty-five that had Sjaak joining the Dutch Navy at the age of fifteen; he was tall enough to pass for older and with the embargo there really wasn't much else for a middle son of a merchant captain to do beyond join the military. He had no strong feelings either way about killing those wanting to invade his home country and oppress him for not being Catholic; they all believed in the same God, were all followers of the One Christ so why did it matter? His father said it was politics and Sjaak was inclined to agree with him._

_At least being in the Navy was better than the Army; his father even got him an officer's commission. Sjaak's ship participates in the defeat of the Spanish Navy in the Battle of the Downs in sixteen thirty-nine, then sails to support the West India Company and the Dutch East India Company until sixteen fifty-two, when the Anglo-Dutch War breaks out over trade disputes. Sjaak loses count of the battles and skirmishes he participates in, but by then he is a ship's captain himself and has more important things to worry about, like his ship and his crew._

_They lost that war, even though it was ended by politicians rather than a decisive victory for the British. Sjaak and most of his men survive, even though their ship does not. But after the war the government is keen to rebuild the Navy to its former glory, so it is not long before Sjaak has a new ship, new crew and is sent off once more in his country's service. _

_The Second Anglo-Dutch War breaks out while Sjaak's ship is in the Far East, but they return in time to take part in what was later called the Four Days' Battle as well as the raid on the Medway the following year. That war they win._

_War comes again in sixteen seventy-two; Sjaak is already grey-haired and has two grown-up children who are virtual strangers. He loses his son to the war, finding out over two months after the funeral due to the distances involved, but manages to hold himself and his command together and bring most of them out the other side._

_In the irony of ironies, barely six months after the end of the Franco-Dutch War Sjaak's ship goes down with all hands in a typhoon off the West Indies. He's up in the rigging when the mast finally cracks and he just _knows_ this is the end of the line._

* * *

_Kuba is a child throughout the War of Austrian Succession, wherin the Prussian King attempts to wrest the Austrian throne from Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria; he is a good patriot though and is as pleased as everyone else in his village when the war comes to a close and her position on the throne is secured. War comes again when Kuba is twenty-one, but he does not join the army because he is his parents' only son and even soldiers have to eat. He is a farmer and knows his duty, both to his parents and his nation._

_His farm is burned twice in the following years, but he survives both times. He loses his parents, his elder sister and two-thirds of everyone he's ever known and kills quite a few Prussian soldiers who do not consider a farmer to be a threat. Never mind that Kuba has shoulders an ox would be proud of and knows exactly what he's doing with both a meat cleaver and a sickle._

_In seventeen sixty-one Kuba catches what he believes to be a normal cold, but swiftly proves to be Influenza instead. It kills him. _

* * *

_Jeames Bruce, born eighteen-twenty, was a deeply unhappy baby. His parents were well-to-do enough to be able to afford a doctor, but the physician could not find anything wrong. At their wits' end, his mother took the sickly, screaming babe to the local minister; hopefully God would resolve the problem._

_What the problem was nobody ever found out: after being prayed for at the local kirk by the minister and the elders, little Jamie became a healthy, happy and normal child. His parents were delighted and did not dissuade their young son when he proclaimed, at the tender age of four, that he wanted to be a minister when he grew up. Yes, he was the eldest, but in this case it was probably better for his younger brother to take up the family business instead. Jamie had been called to the church which had saved him as a child, so it was only proper to heed that call._

_Jamie Bruce became a Presbyterian minister at the age of twenty-four and two years later became the chaplain to the second battalion of the 1__st__ Royal Scots Regiment of Foot, which was newly returned from the West Indies._

_It takes Jamie a little while to get used to being called 'padre' by people who are mostly older than him. It takes far less time to get used to being around foul-mouthed veteran soldiers and wide-eyed recruits; he fits in like he's always been there._

_He's thirty-four when the Regiment gets shipped out to Crimea, which brings back the red dreams for a little while. He's always had the red dreams, where he sees his family slaughtered and brutalised in his parents' home on Edinburgh and hundreds of faceless, nameless bodies lying in the streets with their throats cut. Those dreams are filled with burning rage and heart-rending guilt and always end with him realising that he's covered in blood and has a dripping knife clenched in his hand._

_Jeames hates the red dreams and privately considers war to be a pointless atrocity, but soldiers are no less God's children than anyone else and the second battalion are his friends and comrades now, even with the distance imposed by being a chaplain and a commissioned officer. They are his to care for and he will not abandon them. While in Crimea he discovers he has a knack for languages; his schoolboy French becomes fluent and he picks up a considerable amount of Russian._

_The war ends in eighteen fifty-six and the Regiment is shipped back to Scotland, then the second battalion is shipped out to Hong Kong almost immediately. Chinese is by far the most challenging language Jeames has ever encountered, but the locals will at least talk to him despite his being a foreigner and a Christian and there are educated people in Hong Kong willing to help him expand his vocabulary. Being a chaplain he rarely sees the front lines, instead spending most of his time in the city ministering to the wounded and sick or doing what he can to help the local poor. It takes him a little over a year to become fluent, but the writing system is still giving him trouble eighteen months later. He doesn't give up though. _

_They are shipped back to Scotland again in eighteen sixty, recruiting on behalf of the first battalion and regularly shipping out soldiers to replace the sick and wounded coming back from India and those lost out there._

_Jeames remains with the second battalion all his life, passing away in his sleep in his bed in Glencorse Barracks at the ripe old age of sixty-eight. _

* * *

_The Asset is not an identity. The Asset is an absence of identity, a void underpinned by skills it has never learned and driven by a Mission. There is nothing except the Mission. The Asset lives in the present, every sight, sound, scent and sensation noted and categorised because each one is new and potentially relevant. Time runs slowly for it, as it has experienced so little of it._

_Sometimes it experiences odd internal sensations with no discernible source that disrupt his functionality; these sensations generally result in involuntary behaviour that gets it sent back to The Chair, where they are lost._

_For The Asset, life is a dream: running on its own peculiar logic that makes no sense, yet must be complied with in order for functionality to continue. Incomprehensible things take place that nobody around it seems to consider noteworthy. It has skills it has never acquired and knowledge it has not been previously supplied with. People around it refer to things The Asset does not understand, yet is expected to respond to in ways said people approve of._

_The people around it, bosses, handlers and scientists, undergo change. The Asset knows this even though it does not know how it knows this. They change but The Asset does not._

_The Asset simply is._

* * *

Zimniy Soldat_, the Winter Soldier, existed between nineteen forty-seven and nineteen-fifty-nine. He trained little assets in how to be sneaky, how to defeat larger and stronger entities and how to kill. He was good at it. The little assets learned well; they are good little spiders._

_Winter Soldier speaks Russian with a Voronezh accent, never wears less than seven knives –all of them freshly sharpened– and ruffles the little assets' hair when they manage to meet his exacting standards. He likes eating solyanka and drinking stavlenniy myod. He also likes Russian literature, Tchaikovsky's music and ghosting up behind people and waiting patiently for them to notice him. _

_The squeals of terror are hilarious. The little assets agree with him, except when they are the ones squeaking. Winter Soldier finds their suspiciously specific denials endearing._

_Training the little spiders is not all he does; Winter Soldier is kept busy enforcing order on the behalf of the KGB, terminating internal threats to the Soviet Union. But all too soon the little assets are not-so-little and he is no longer required to train them. He is no longer needed to be _Zimniy Soldat _and to remember._

_The Chair makes him forget and Winter Soldier ceases to be._

* * *

_Iakov, son of Stephan, first notices Ileana daughter of Ion when he is twenty-three. She is only twelve and still a child, but her intelligence, kindness and generosity captivate him and he can tell that she will be beautiful once she is grown. So he speaks to her father, offering as substantial a dowry as he is currently able and promising a tithe of any spoils he may take from future battlefields between now and when Ileana is permitted to marry him._

_Ion may be a farmer but he is a canny and observant man whom Iakov has known his entire life and a bargain is struck: unless Ileana takes strongly against him, Iakov will be allowed to marry her once she is seventeen. Five years is a long time and Iakov knows he may easily die before they are up, but he has not the slightest inclination to marry a child. Ileana is easy to love and love her he does, but he does not desire her at all. He can wait. _

_Still, he definitely wants her to favour him so he spends time with her, brings her presents and talks honestly with her about himself. She is a delight and the light of his life._

_Ileana is fourteen when she begins growing into herself and not quite seventeen when fully matured, at which point she is utterly stunning to look at and Iacov can no longer honestly say that he does not desire her physically. Because he really, truly does and he is certain he isn't the only one. She has no shortage of suitors her own age and numerous older men are also interested. Ileana however only has eyes for him and Iacov cannot be anything short of smug about that. He got in there first, he got to know her, he is completely and irreversibly in love with her and she is no less taken with him; this is what victory feels like and it is sweet indeed._

_But war is on their doorstep and Ion will not let Iacov wed his daughter simply to widow her. He has to come _back _from the battlefield for that._

_So Iacov goes to war, fights hard for his boyar and voivode and is richly rewarded for his loyalty. Upon returning he immediately seeks out Ion, who laughs at him and agrees Iacov can marry Ileana the following day. Once they are married they will ask the priest to bless their union in the chapel attached to the castle and everything will be fully official._

_But that evening brings darkness on the wings of bats and the horror of death; his beloved lies pale and broken in the mud, her hair bleached white by her suffering and her flesh cold as stone. He is too late; all he can do is offer himself in her stead –with her dead, life is not worth living anyway– and vainly hope that the demon that his boyar has betrayed his Ileana to will keep its word and return her to life._

_The last thing he sees before he is agonisingly unmade is his beloved convulsing as she takes in a deep, rattling breath._

* * *

_Date: August 2__nd__ 1985\. Mission: death of American citizen Samantha Smith. Caveat: make it look like an accident._

_Date: August 26__th__ 1985\. Mission: complete. Method: Asset posed as passenger in order to gain access to aircraft and incapacitated primary pilot of Flight 1808 out of Boston August 25__th__, replaced by Asset for duration of the flight. Asset concealed body on board for first half of flight, then incapacitated secondary pilot prior to approaching Auburn. Asset then sabotaged altimeters on aircraft Beech 99, posed insensate pilots in cockpit and exited aircraft immediately prior to initial collision. _

Opening his eyes even as his mind was filled with the feel of drizzle lashing against his airborne body and the tearing howl of an aircraft colliding with trees, Bucky stared blankly at the ceiling above him. That wasn't just a crazy dream; that had happened. He had done that. Admittedly at the time he'd had no idea why he was doing it and had lacked the mental context to make a moral protest to being ordered to assassinate a thirteen-year-old, but he'd still done it. In retrospect he could recognise that HYDRA had determined that the little girl's status as a 'Goodwill Ambassador' threatened their long-term plans to dominate the planet, but at the time he'd just been following orders. He hadn't even realised that Samantha Smith was a child until afterwards, when he'd followed up the 'accident' on the radio.

In all honesty, Bucky didn't feel much like the kid from Brooklyn who'd spent twelve years wading into fights to get Stevie out of trouble. That guy had been young and overly trusting, if a genuine realist. The person he felt like now wouldn't have kept dragging Stevie out of fights after the guy turned sixteen; maybe that way Steve would have learned better than to pick fights he couldn't win. There were better ways to deal with bullies than attacking them head-on and beating them down; doing that was just proving you were bigger and stronger than they were.

Stevie could look after himself now; he had the strength and the muscle not to need rescuing all the time so it was past time he learned to pace himself and be responsible. It would probably take a while; it was very, very obvious in retrospect that _–_despite being a foot taller and at least twice his previous weight_–_ during World War II Steve had still thought of himself as the little guy and he had entered all social interaction with the expectation that people would give him their consideration because of that. Probably not deliberately, but Steve had grown up being either targeted or coddled because of what he looked like and no matter how much he had complained about it, he had still considered it _normal_. Now people were paying attention because he was six foot tall and a wall of solid muscle instead but Steve didn't seem to have adapted yet.

According to HYDRA Steve had been on ice between 1945 and 2012, which meant he'd only had three and a bit years to get used to the drastic change in how people perceived and treated him. Based on the data from his last Mission _–Kill Steven Grant Rogers, codename Captain America– _Stevie hadn't exactly been going out of his way to socialise since being defrosted by SHIELD, so he might not have actually noticed it properly yet. From what he'd seen as The Asset, Steve still interacted with others as though he was five feet tall with everything to prove.

Steve would have to get used to the fact that being six foot tall meant that people frequently decided _you_ were the bully when you tried to get them to 'see things your way', especially if you used your fists. It didn't matter how pure your intentions were; remember that saying about the road to Hell, Stevie?

So, what did he want to do with himself now and who was he anyway?

* * *

Notes

All the wars referenced are genuine and historical.

Samantha Smith was a real girl who did indeed die in a plane crash, which I have fictionalised as an assassination because that's the kind of thing HYDRA would have arranged.

EDIT 19/4/15


	3. Choice

**Fairytale Romance**

Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier.

* * *

The first thing –_Jamie? Iacov? Sjaak? Does it matter?_ – he does upon waking and remembering _everything_ is stumble into the bathroom to take a piss and stare at himself in the full length mirror. He's always looked much the same, though as Diego and Giacomo he was darker skinned and as Seamus and Jaakko his hair was fairer. The really glaring difference that sets who he is now apart from all his previous lifetimes is the metal arm and complete absence of scars, bar the ones where said arm attaches around his shoulder. Even Jamie, who had never picked up a weapon in his life, had scars: chickenpox scars, scars from accidents, mishaps and hard living. But now his skin is clean and unmarred, the injuries he'd picked up as Bucky in the Second World War smoothed away by years of super-soldier serum in his veins. Fifteen years and forty-eight days out of the past sixty-nine years are all he's been out of cryo, but despite getting beaten up by Steve and falling in the Potomac shortly before Ileana got her hands on him he still looks far healthier now than he had been in Brooklyn, the last time he was young.

Apart from the deep, puckered scar tissue around his left shoulder; thick lines that follow his ribs and collarbone. That those haven't healed like all the others is deeply suspicious, now that he has the lucidity to properly think about it. Everything else healed, including that time he got impaled through the stomach by a metal girder when an explosive charge went off too early and he got thrown twenty feet through the air. What did Zola _do_ and _how_, to so thoroughly stymie his body's unnatural healing ability?

Is there something under the scars that is preventing him from healing fully?

He is still staring at himself in the mirror, trying to decide whether or not that thought is sensible wariness or merely irrational paranoia, when there is a knock on the door and Ileana's voice reaches his ears:

"_Soldat meu?_"

He can't help the fond, soft smile that spreads across his face. No matter the lifetime or the name, he has always been and will always be Ileana's soldier. Soldat is as good a name as any to go by for the time being. This particular body might have always been James Buchanan Barnes, but he remembers being far too many different people to be 'Bucky' anymore. Iacov doesn't really fit either and nor do any of his other past identities, not even the long-lived ones.

"I'm fine, doll," he says absently; "just thinking about having a shave." He's always liked how he looked without facial hair better than the alternatives.

There is a soft huff from the other side of the door and Soldat can almost see his darling girl rolling her eyes at him. "Well get on with it then; I'm cooking dinner and your _bunicut_ has been waiting impatiently for the chance to talk to you."

Soldat blinks and chuckles as he remembers his encounter with his Gramps while not entirely in his right mind. He'd been far too impressed by the old man's dramatic flair and titles, but at least Gramps didn't know that. Unless Ileana had translated the Gaelic for him since then.

He needs to shave and leave the bathroom; has Ileana found clothing for him beyond the pyjama trousers he is currently wearing? It seems the kind of thing she'd do, especially since Soldat's probably been unconscious for several days. He also really needs to find out how it was that she is still alive and if it has anything to do with his unexpected serial reincarnations over the past five and a half hundred years. Hopefully she hasn't sold her soul or anything.

* * *

Tony Stark knows _exactly_ where the Winter Soldier is, because the Winter Soldier is James Buchanan Barnes, aka Steve Rogers' old friend Bucky, aka Ileana's Iacov. He heard the Manhunt alert –and disabled it two days later when Ileana showed up on the camera feeds– and arranged for her to be given the keys for the apartment he owned in Columbia Heights, DC. He'd even shipped half her wardrobe there, along with a selection of clothing JARVIS assured him would fit her boytoy.

Since he wasn't sure if Barnes had any clothing preferences beyond mercenary chic or forties suits, Tony had included a selection of both along with a broad range of sturdy modern casual. He'd probably gone a bit overboard by Pepper's standards, but Ileana wouldn't mind and it wasn't like it mattered; it was only money. He had plenty of it. Hell, Stark Industries owned a good portion of its success to Ileana, so it was as much her money as it was his. Which reminded him; she needed a new identity. She was still officially Elena Castel, daughter of Anna Castel, but her passport said she was fifty nine and she only looked seventeen.

Hm. Ileana was probably going to want to marry her Soldier at once, so she needed to be at least eighteen; twenty-one would be better though, as that way she'd be past her majority and considered fully adult which was important since this new identity didn't technically _have_ parents. That worked; he could put her new birthday in nineteen ninety-three, five years after he fiddled her indentured servitude agreement. That way 'Elena' could plausibly have met someone and gotten pregnant. Calling up the documents for 'Anna' and 'Elena', Tony grinned mischievously as he noticed that 'Elena' had no father listed on her birth certificate. That meant he could perfectly feasibly put _his_ father on it, making Ileana officially his niece. Not that he didn't trust Pepper completely and think she made a fantastic CEO, but Ileana had been watching over SI for almost as long as it had existed and had raised Tony from birth; she really was the best person to own the company and would make a point of finding and funding new up-and-coming young genii to keep it on the cutting edge should anything happen to him.

Besides, it wasn't like Tony was ever going to have kids, not at his age. Or at least, he didn't think he was because Pepper had never even hinted at wanting kids and as the love of his life it was her call, not his. He was pretty sure Pepper would make a great mom despite his own misgivings about his suitability as a father. But that wasn't the issue right now; the issue was setting Ileana up as his niece and making the back-story plausible.

Well, Ileana was terrifyingly polyglot, so a mother who travelled constantly was perfectly possible and Europe had become a Union in '93, so Elena the theoretical single parent could quite plausibly have travelled all over with minimal passport records. Adding in how much money Howard had thrown at her for basically raising Tony, Ileana probably _had_ travelled all over Europe, Africa and Asia around then; she could certainly have afforded it and some of his letters in that period had rather exotic stamps on them. Better to have her 'born' in the States though; that way she wouldn't have to apply for citizenship again.

So, theoretical Elena raised theoretical baby Ileana while wandering all over the planet before coming back to the States in 2010, when theoretical Ileana would have been sixteen or seventeen. Moves to the ranch, gets some homeschooling –which Ileana _had_ done and there were records for, as she'd been 'catching up' as she did every other decade or so– and living off her money until she meets…

Crap, he needed to create a cover identity for Barnes as well. Because there was no _way_ he'd be able to resurrect the original identity of James Buchanan Barnes without people noticing. Damn. Oh well, he could be just plain 'James Barnes', born in '87 since he looked late twenties and an army vet. Creating a fake classified military history was easy peasy, as was adding him to a list of MIA soldiers who had escaped captivity in Afghanistan back in 2011, with the addendum of him missing over half his left arm and being the only survivor of his unit. Next were documents of a military pension –which Tony would be funding, technically– a PTSD diagnosis and retirement to civilian life, leading to meeting Ileana in '12 and getting a 'Stark Industries prototype prosthetic' towards the end of last year.

On a side-note, he really wants to have a close look at that metal arm because he is pretty sure he can do better. Certainly that tacky communist star had to go, like, yesterday and HYDRA has probably booby-trapped the thing to hell and back because they are assholes like that. Ileana texted him a few days ago to let him know she wanted him to look at her Soldier discreetly, in case of implants and shit like that, so Tony was actually going to get a chance to ogle the arm provided Barnes cooperated.

Tony isn't sure how he feels about the fact that, according to the HYDRA documents JARVIS had taken off the web, Barnes had arranged his parents' car accident. Yes, Maria was _never_ his mother, not really, and Howard had forgotten he even had a son half the time, but losing them had still hurt. It would have hurt worse had Ileana not broken into the lab two days later and hugged him until he broke down and cried, but just because he'd gotten over their deaths didn't mean he was _happy_ about them having been murdered. By a brainwashed super-soldier no less; not that he _blames_ Barnes, exactly, but he's probably not going to be very friendly despite the man being the love of Ileana's life.

He's sure he'll get over it eventually, but the first few meetings are going to be tense. Tony expects he'll put his foot in his mouth a few times and get defensive about it then feel stupid and guilty later. Ileana will smooth things over though, so he can focus on the important things –like making sure that arm isn't going to explode– and it will get better.

The Ultron Project he's been working on for the past two years is coming along very nicely though, so well in fact that full implementation will probably take less than a year. Once Ileana and her boy-toy are dealt with and HYDRA is no longer flailing around trying to hide from the public eye, he can finally get on with actually _building_ Ultron and making sure it works the way the simulations say it will.

* * *

Soldat had been directed to the closet attached to the apartment's bedroom for a change of clothing, but having opened out the wardrobe doors now finds himself in a bit of a predicament.

There are too many clothes.

Yes, the entire left-hand side of the closet is filled with women's clothing, but the sheer range and scale of the outfits on display is giving him a bit of a headache, mostly because despite his total lack of experience in matters of haute couture he can tell the combined contents of this wardrobe cost more than most people make in their entire _lives_.

From left to right there are fabulous evening gowns, slinky cocktail dresses, individually tailored suits that range from austerely professional through snappy all the way to sexy via at least two dozen different jacket cuts, trouser styles and skirt lengths, more than thirty different varieties of shirt and blouse in a mixture of colours and materials, a few sets of protective clothing of the kind worn in factories or on industrial sites and a further five feet of what the Asset part of his brain has dubbed 'urban camouflage': jeans, jackets, tops in a variety of fashionable labels and a range of casual skirts. Boardroom to high school campus, there is an outfit for every occasion and shoes to match every outfit. There is even a rack of scarves, shawls and headscarves, another of gloves and a shelf loaded with hatboxes.

Ileana had mentioned a 'lord' she served; whoever he was he was definitely keeping her in a manner Soldat could never hope to match. Then again, going by the other side of the wardrobe it looked like said 'lord' was intending to keep _him_ in that kind of style as well, which was deeply weird and vaguely disturbing. Just looking at the content told him _that _much.

From right to left, his side of the closet is divided very neatly into thirds. The first third is suits: snappy, impeccably tailored tuxedos, stylish office wear, night-on-the-town suits, casual suits in a range of colours and weights and even subdued, blend-into-the-background suits that would enable him to melt into the masses in any city street. There are shirts to go with every suit and three –_three!_ – racks of ties to go with the shirts. There are even _waistcoats_. But each suit also has a harness to go beneath the jacket, ranging from simple ones you can add a shoulder holster and maybe a pair of knives on up to the one that goes with the heaviest charcoal grey suit that you could fit a respectable armoury into. There're even a few sets of knives –both ceramic and steel– to choose from and two locked cases containing handguns in a range of sizes and holsters to match.

Soldat wonders if Ileana's 'lord' wants him as a bodyguard, a hitman or a spy. That there are at least two dozen different pairs of shoes to go with the suits is the least of his problems.

The next third of the closet is filled with the kind of clothing he's been wearing for most of this lifetime, all in sturdy fabrics in various dull colours and a wide range of weights: army-style trousers, plain, sleeveless vests, jackets and shirts. But there're also tac vests and several different kinds of body armour, each clearly labelled, a selection of coats you could hide an armoury under and a rack of gloves, ranging from skin-tone latex through silk up to sturdy leather in a range of styles and colours: driving gloves, gloves for using fiddly tools, gloves for handling explosives and more besides.

There're even boots. Fabulously sturdy boots that he is going to wear regardless of what this guy's motives are, because Soldat knows the value of good boots and has _killed_ for good boots in several of his lifetimes. Anybody who buys him boots like these has earned the right to have Soldat listen to his sales pitch.

The final third of the wardrobe is more Urban Camouflage, but for men: jeans, shirts, vests, jackets, jumpers, slacks, shorts, coats and several racks of fashion accessories, from ties to handkerchiefs to headscarves to leather cuffs to even more gloves. The shoes at this end are more eclectic, including sneakers, running shoes, sandals and even cowboy boots, but Soldat can see how the various pieces fit together into outfits. Most of the outfits will even allow him to hide weapons inside them.

Ileana had mentioned to him that he'd been mostly unconscious for eight days. In that time a man whom he has never met has bought for him enough clothing to see him through several lifetimes, some chosen to match what Ileana already owns but partly picked out based on his own history as Bucky Barnes and HYDRA's Asset. There is no doubt in Soldat's mind that Ileana's 'lord' knows he is a professional killer, but the man is giving him the choice to carry concealed anyway. This man he's never met and doesn't even know the name of, who has done all this of his own initiative because Ileana wouldn't ever ask.

Whoever this guy is, Soldat needs to meet him. Because people don't _do_ this kind of thing for total strangers, not even when there are a million strings attached. People only offer these kind of options to people they trust, people they love. If this guy loves his Ileana, is crazy enough about her to buy clothes for a guy who's been in the news for attempting to murder _Captain America_, then Soldat _needs_ to do a threat assessment. This man is as rich as sin and men like that are rarely good people.

Howard was decent though.

_Date: February 12__th__, 1991. Mission: death of Howard and Maria Stark. Caveat: must appear accidental. _

_Date: February 16__th__, 1991. Mission: complete. Method: small explosive charges planted around brake cable ends and activated while vehicle was in motion. Seatbelts also sabotaged. Primary target initially survived crash; terminated by Asset with a glass fragment severing the carotid artery. _

Soldat swallows hard, metal hand twitching. Bucky had gotten on well with Howard after getting away from Zola the first time; the industrialist had been a real stand-up guy and good at what he did. The Asset hadn't even recognised him. Then again, The Asset hadn't recognised Stevie either, not really.

_Walking away from the crashed car, Howard's blood all over his hands and arms and splattered across his mask_–

Soldat turns and dashes back to the bathroom so he can be sick in the toilet.

After throwing up bile for several minutes until he can forcibly calm his stomach and wash the taste of stomach acid out of his mouth, Soldat returns to the bedroom to grab some trousers out of the 'combat' section, a good shirt out of the 'smart' section –plus a weapons harness and some ceramic knives– and a brown leather jacket out of the 'urban camouflage' section. Then he investigates the chest of drawers and finds that yes, it does contain underwear. Boxers, socks and vests alongside thermals for cold weather and an entire drawer filled with different sets of pyjamas. Who needs fourteen different pairs of pyjamas?

Dressed comfortably and fully armed, Soldat picks up one of the pairs of good boots and then leaves the bedroom. The wooden floors and plush carpets suggest that wearing shoes inside is Not Done, so he'll stick to socks for the time being. It certainly isn't cold enough for footwear indoors to be necessary.

He needs to eat and something smells fantastic, so Soldat follows his nose to the kitchen. The scene awaiting him is both reassuringly familiar and jarringly alien, so much so that it is not until he hears the creak of the doorframe that he realises that he's bracing his left hand against it so hard he's bending the wood under his fingertips.

Ileana is standing at the stove in an embroidered, short-sleeved cotton blouse and a calf-length skirt under a pink apron decorated with white polka-dots. He's watched her cook so many times –she's magnificent in the kitchen– and the clothing is almost familiar but not quite. That she's standing at a stove rather than cooking over a fireplace is the biggest change, as is the way her hair is tightly braided and wrapped around her head, baring the nape of her neck to his gaze.

When he was Iacov, in his first lifetime, unmarried girls did not tie up their hair like that. They might braid it and bundle it back, but never baring the back of their necks. Soldat had never considered why that might be before; he'd also never realised that the back of a girl's neck could look so indecent and alluring. There are tiny curls there, too short to tame and taunting him by their very existence.

The other anachronism in the room is his Gramps, who is wearing a black leather duster coat over an equally black shirt and pair of slacks and lounging across one of the kitchen chairs as though the slim, pale wooden construct is an opulent throne. The former Prince of Wallachia only has socks on his feet –dark red socks with black dragons on them– and is watching Ileana cook with the same intensity he always used to watch Bucky's mother and grandmother when they prepared meals. Bucky had never quite understood that, but Soldat does now: There is something precious and intimate about having somebody feed you when you can remember hundreds of meals eaten on the move, poor-tasting, barely nutritious and usually cold. Army food is the lowest a meal can get yet still be considered semi-edible and Soldat remembers more campaigns than he cares to think about. Memories of a meal prepared in a house, especially for him? Those are far rarer and infinitely more precious.

But having Ileana and Gramps in the same space is jarring because they fit not at all and far too well. In his first lifetime Iacov was vaguely familiar with his Voivode and witnessed the man's decision to destroy his chances of heaven in order to save his people. He knew a stern, brilliant and selfless general who intimidated and inspired him. Bucky on the other hand remembers a kind, firm grandparent who told fantastic, disturbing and hilarious stories and had a wonderful laugh.

That Iacov's Prince and Bucky's Gramps are the same person is slightly dizzying, as it makes Soldat realise that Ileana and his Gramps are contemporaries and probably know each-other very well. Wallachia wasn't all that big after all and the two immortals probably couldn't avoid meeting. Though Soldat still doesn't know how or why his Ileana managed to become deathless. Was it something to do with how she was resurrected? Is it his fault?

"Iacov?" Soldat blinks, then notices Ileana eyeballing him over her shoulder.

"Call me Soldat, please, _dragă_," he says, releasing the doorframe and letting himself collapse into the nearest chair before sliding it sideways so the wall is behind him and he has clear lines of sight across the room and out the tall windows. "I've gone by far too many different names over the years but I've been a soldier as almost all of them."

"Soldat's not a very friendly name though," Ileana points out, her cheeks pinking ever so slightly at his casual usage of an endearment as she turns back to the meal she is preparing.

"Pick a variant you like then, _Liebling_," Soldat says, shrugging. "Just not of James, please: who I am now is not any of the people I've been before, not really." Once he's comfortable in his own skin again he'll pick a James-variant he likes, but right now he feels too fractured for any of them to sit right.

"Solly? No, that isn't you at all… hmm… something more Slavic I think… Solya? Datya? Dasha?"

Soldat had _not_ been expecting his lady-love to go for Russian, or even to _know_ Russian. Clearly he has missed a lot. "Dasha," he decides.

"As you wish, Datochka." Soldat twitched at the way her tone caressed the playful diminutive; across the table Gramps snorted.

"Is there a joke I missed?" Soldat asks cautiously.

"Movie quote," the former prince of Wallachia tells him with a smile. "A classic too; we can watch it after dinner."

HYDRA had kept their Asset up to date by getting him out of storage once a year for an intensive ten-day catch-up on new technology, weaponry, combat styles and changes to global politics. That last one had been heavily biased of course, but it did mean that Soldat knew how to work a television, video recorder, DVD player and even a touch-screen tablet. He could also fly most military and civilian aircraft, use any weapon made in the past hundred years, hack into security cameras and had considerable experience in forensics. He hadn't seen a movie since before the Second World War though.

"That smells really, really good _geliefde_," Soldat says, looking across at Ileana again.

"Beef bourguignon," she tells him, glancing over her shoulder to smile shyly at him from under her lashes. "You woke up French the day before I went shopping."

That explains why the smell is vaguely familiar as well as mouth-wateringly delicious. "How much longer?" Soldat asks plaintively as his stomach rumbles loudly.

Ileana grins. "Not long; you could lay the table."

Laying the table means opening every single drawer and cupboard in the search for cutlery, crockery and table linen, which does indeed pass the time despite Gramps' refusal to help out. By the time Ileana is turning off the stove Soldat has readied the table with a creamy linen tablecloth and matching napkins, sleek stainless steel cutlery and hand painted plates with subtle and elegant art deco designs around the rims; this is something he hasn't done since he was Bucky but that doesn't mean he's forgotten how.

"So, explanations?" Soldat asks once he's finished his first helping and been served a second one.

"Sorry?" Ileana asks.

"How am I alive, let alone remembering an additional eleven lifetimes when I know I sold myself body and soul to save you from the _Răutate _that our boyar handed you over to," Soldat clarifies. "I know it brought you back; I wasn't expecting you to turn out to be immortal though. Is that my fault?" He'd asked that she live after all; had he destroyed her chances of heaven and prevented her from ever dying?

Gramps snorts and pushes his cleared plate aside. "Iacov, do you remember the tale of the Girl and her Soldier?"

Soldat tilts his head on one side in between mouthfuls. "Of course I do; you told it nearly every time you visited us in Brooklyn. What's that got to-" the penny drops; Soldat's eyes widen.

"That's about _me_?"

Gramps guffaws, bracing one palm on the tabletop so he doesn't fall out of his chair. "A little slow today, grandson?"

Soldat doesn't answer, his mind whirling as madly as any fairground ride. He knows the story by heart –he's heard it enough times and repeated it to a variety of audiences– but realising that it's about him and Ileana is just…

Fairytales aren't supposed to be real! And on that note:

"Ileana, you sold yourself into indentured servitude on the _off chance_ you _might_ find me again? How could you be so _reckless_!"

"You were _dead_!" Ileana screams back, not giving an inch. "You _sold_ your _soul_ for me! What kind of woman would I be to just let that lie! I _couldn't_! So I did what I had to, to win you a chance of freedom! I knew you'd probably hate me for it afterwards but it was _worth it_!"

Soldat gapes. "Nigh on five hundred and forty years of suffering and forced obedience? I'm not worth _that_, _schatje_!"

"I'd do it all again, twice as long even!" Ileana retorts sharply, rising to her feet. "You damned yourself to an eternity of oblivion and what's a little pain compared to that?"

"Ileana," Soldat can't help the tears welling up at that declaration, but his point has to be made, "doll, it made you _kill people_." Ileana had always been the light of his life, the kindness and the gentle hope that there was more to life than death and slaughter. She had been pure and innocent in a way that had nothing to do with being virginal and chaste. But the Darkness had taken that away from her, turned her into a murderer and she thought it was _worth it_? He wasn't worth _that_.

He regrets his words as soon as they pass his lips; his darling love abruptly closes her eyes tight and bows her head, breathing heavily through her nose. Soldat deliberately remains in his seat, not wanting to loom over her or indeed do anything she might consider threatening. More threatening. Ach, he's really messing this up.

"Many are dead because of me," Ileana admits tightly, "some through mischance and many deliberately slain, but their souls were free to pass into the afterlife their lives had earned them. You were not so free and I _cannot_ regret it." Her shoulders hitch; "even though the Darkness bound your heart as tightly as he bound my will."

"Ileana?" Soldat can tell he's opened a real can of worms here but isn't sure how to reassure his beloved that he's not angry with her, not really: he's just really upset about what she's suffered through on his behalf.

"The Darkness bound your heart, Iacov, so you _couldn't_ ever love anyone else like you loved me," Ileana says sadly, tears sliding down her face and dripping from her cheeks. "Now I've found you and you remember yourself you are no longer bound to an eternity of oblivion; that was the deal. You'll live out this lifetime and when you die, it will be for the last time: you'll be able to move on."

"But what about you, _älskling_?" Soldat begs, his left hand fisted in his lap to prevent him from breaking the table by accident. He doesn't care that he's essentially been cursed to never move on from Ileana; she is still the best thing that has ever happened to him, even eleven lifetimes later. He _chose_ to love her, still desperately wants to marry her and actually feels pretty bad about those lifetimes he was married in; the first time it was to protect his best friend's wife and children and in later ones out of social pressure. Even though he never loved those women like he does Ileana, it was still a betrayal of everything she means to him. Some of his past incarnations might have descendants alive today.

"Now you have found me I am no longer immune to death and my eyes no longer kill," she says quietly, "but I will remain bound to serve in obedience and pain unless you wed me. Do not do so out of duty, please?" Her voice cracks on that final plea and Soldat almost knocks the kitchen table over as he leaps out of his chair and snatches her up off her feet into a fierce embrace.

"Whoever said anything about duty, _kulta_? You're _mine_, you've always and only been mine and I'm not about to let you get away from me! I've never _wanted_ to be in love with anyone else and that's not about to change! I just hate to see you hurt, _gra' mo chroi_, and I _know_ that since the Darkness stole you from my arms you have done nothing but suffer and grieve, bound in a cage and all alone.

"I never wanted that for you, _chérie_," he mutters into her hair, pressing kisses all over the top of her head and keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her. "Yes, I have been hurt, and died, and gone to war more times than I care to remember, but I was always among friends. I had family around me. All those lifetimes and I was never without comrades and support until I fell off that damn train and that handful of years pales into insignificance compared to what you've gone though; _ljubímaja_, I'm so, _so_ sorry I didn't find you sooner."

His darling beloved laughs at him, though the sound is more of a hiccupping sob than an expression of genuine amusement. "Dasha, you didn't even know I _existed_. How were you supposed to find me?"

"Feelings aren't logical, _cari__ño_," he mock-reprimands her, leaning against the kitchen counter so he can shift her into a more comfortable position without putting her down. "I've lived long lifetimes and short ones, but for most of all of them I had people around me who loved me. Who loved you?"

Ileana twists slightly in his grasp, burying her face in the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. He can feel her tears soaking into his shirt as she weeps soundlessly, shudders wracking her body. She never used to cry like this; when he was Iacov her grief was always loud and fierce, no matter how short-lived. That she has been forced to learn to silence herself hurts his heart.

Gramps is no longer in the kitchen; Soldat seems to remember him leaving hastily via the balcony door right at the beginning of the fight. He always did that back when Bucky had been a kid in Brooklyn too, on those rare occasions when Bucky's parents set each-other off and had a row. Bucky had also done his best to make himself scarce when that happened; his mother had been _terrifying_ when she let loose.

Soldat rocks gently back and forth, pressing kisses to as much of his beloved as he can reach. Knowing what he does now, he can guess that the 'lord' she mentioned earlier is the one whom she is sworn to obey. At least he seems to appreciate her service; now that he understands the situation better, Soldat knows that all the pretty clothing in the world can't make up for the fact that Ileana has no freedom. A gilded cage is still a cage.

But Ileana is here with him and her master is nowhere to be seen, so perhaps the unknown man prefers to keep her at a distance. It is only since meeting him that her eyes have stopped being lethal and Soldat knows that most people are far more afraid of dying than is really sensible.

Having died many times, Soldat knows that it is not that big a deal. It's what comes after death that matters. Ileana however has been denied that; he cannot imagine what it must be like to see your life looming over you with no end in sight, knowing all the while that you are utterly enslaved to the whims of another. Even as HYDRA's Asset, he could still choose to disobey. Yes, it always got him The Chair, but it was no less a choice for that.

Ileana had always been a free spirit, careful in making choices that she would not regret, but the Darkness had taken her freedom as a ransom for Soldat's soul. Over five centuries of slavery so absolute she physically _could not_ disobey? That is Hell. It makes his soul scream in terror just thinking about it. What has been done to her that she could not prevent? What has she been made complicit in by past masters? Absolute power corrupts absolutely and many, many generations of men have held absolute power over his beloved.

Soldat wishes very much that this was something he could do something about. Comforting Ileana while she cries doesn't seem nearly enough.

* * *

Vlad Draculea, Son of the Dragon, whose nickname that had nothing to do with his transformation into a creature of the night –his father had been called Vlad the Dragon and had thoroughly earned the epithet– had very sensibly fled the kitchen as soon as tempers started fraying. He'd watched young Iacov grow up and knew Ileana better than anybody else alive –except possibly her little lord– and getting between them was something only a fool would do. Vlad liked to think he wasn't a fool, which was why he was perched on the balcony railing despite it being ten o'clock at night. It was pleasantly reminiscent of visiting Mike and Dot in Brooklyn all those years ago, where he had on occasion taken refuge on the fire escape due to his son and daughter-in-law having a spat. It wasn't raining and it wouldn't have made any difference if it was; their relationship drama wasn't his business.

What saddened the former prince was how events had conspired to delay the meeting between his grandson and Pale Ileana. Once Iacov was of age to marry Vlad had gone looking for her in Europe, but war had immediately broken out and he'd been delayed by the need to help his countrymen, only discovering several years later that her boyar's castle was one and the same with the one that Howard Stark had been in the newspapers for transporting to America and rebuilding. Realising that Ileana had been right there in New York all along was irony at its finest and Vlad had hurried back across the Atlantic as fast as he was able but he'd been too late: his grandson had already been drafted into the escalating conflict.

Vlad had immediately sought out Ileana himself and told her everything, but she had been stymied by her then-lord's extensive and specific demands on her time. She hadn't been allowed to attend the World Exposition, hadn't been allowed to join Howard in Europe and had been forced mourn privately, helpless and grief-stricken, when news filtered back of Iacov's demise in early 1945.

There hadn't been much Vlad could do to alert his grandson of Ileana's existence from a continent away, but she had been featured on the front page of Time magazine towards the end of 1943 and he had ensured several copies were posted to the newly-formed Howling Commandos. It had been somewhat heartbreaking when Iacov's belongings were returned to his son and they discovered that front cover and the related article carefully preserved alongside a risqué pin-up sketch that was very definitely of Ileana. Vlad suspected Iacov hadn't yet connected Pale Ileana to Anna Castel, Chairwoman of Stark Industries and role model to all those ladies on the home front who had to step into the shoes of their menfolk to support the war effort. Admittedly Anna Castel had been a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed brunette with fashionable curls, but it wasn't like Ileana had bothered to do anything to disguise the shape of her face or her build.

Iacov _would_ find out about Ileana being Anna though, probably rather soon, and it was going to be highly amusing. Vlad hoped he was present when it happened and that he had time to snap a photograph of his grandson's expression.

* * *

Soldat wound up carrying Ileana into the bedroom and sitting them both down on the bed, because the bed was the only furniture for sitting on in the entire apartment other than the kitchen chairs. Clearly this isn't where Ileana usually lives.

That is actually a relief; Soldat has a feeling he'd been on ice under the now-destroyed Triskelion building for the better part of twenty years and the chance to get a bit of distance between him and it will be very welcome. He's pretty sure HYDRA won't be looking for him anywhere nearby –they will expect him to run as far and fast as possible after going rogue– but that's no reason to tempt fate.

Putting his former captors out of his mind for the time being, Soldat ponders the best way to ask his fiancée of five-centuries-and-change to marry him without triggering any more unhappy issues. He'd rather like to marry her right now –by the Orthodox traditions of their first lifetime it is 'becoming one flesh' that counts as marriage rather than any ceremony– but she very definitely needs time to recover from her crying jag and all the memories and insecurities he has accidentally unearthed. He recognises he's probably not going to be able to avoid that happening again –he's sure she'll be accidentally triggering him too– but so long as he can make it clear to her that he would much rather they face those problems _together_…

For the time being though, it's really swell to have a pretty dame in his lap he can cuddle. It's been so _long_ since he's been able to snuggle with someone that Soldat is loathe to do anything to curtail this opportunity. Ileana isn't crying anymore but she seems disinclined to let go of him and he's perfectly fine with that. He's got his best –and only– girl in his arms and neither of them have anywhere else to be.

Realising that Ileana is falling asleep on him just gives him an excuse to slip out of his weapons harness –which he stashes under the edge of the bed where he can reach it– and wrap himself around her more closely. She pushes him off pretty quickly and staggers over to the closet to change out of her clothes, but once wearing pyjamas she comes straight back to bed and flops down in the warm spot on the left-hand side of the bed, cozying right up to him. Soldat instantly strips out of most of the rest of his clothing and joins her under the blankets, draping himself across her back so that he can reach over her and down to his discarded weapons in case of an emergency.

Despite his having spent over a week unconscious already, sleep takes Soldat swiftly.

* * *

"Tony, _off_."

Soldat opens his eyes and automatically catches the elbow being poked into his ribs. "Who's Tony?"

Ileana glances back over her shoulder at him, eyes bleary and hair coming loose from her braids. "He's m'lord. Raised him from birth; too kind for his own good and far too clever by half. He's clingy as anything and a bit silly about money too. Get _off_: I want a shower."

Soldat rolls over onto his back to Ileana can get away, mentally re-evaluating his position on Ileana's master. The situation is clearly not as serious at it initially appeared; whoever 'Tony' is, Ileana sees him as family. Considering that she called him 'too kind for his own good', that sentiment is probably reciprocated.

Richer than sin, too clever by half and called Tony... Soldat sits bolt upright, all his muscles tensing and his left hand fisting so tightly in the sheets that his metal fingers rip holes in the cotton.

Tony Stark?!

Wait, if Ileana raised Tony does that mean that she used to work for Howard? It does. Howard was Ileana's previous master. How did that happen? Howard can't have inherited her; he was a self-made billionaire. He had to have acquired her somehow, been made the heir of the man who owned her previously.

Bucky remembers a newspaper article back in '37, where Stark made the headlines for buying up a castle in Romania, shipping it back to the States and rebuilding it brick-for-brick on his estate in the Appalachians. Had that been _the_ castle, the one he and Ileana had grown up in the shadows of all those centuries ago?

Soldat killed Howard. He's not sure if Ileana realises this or even how attached she was to Howard in the first place, but he's pretty sure Tony Stark isn't going to be very happy with him about that. Although judging by the closet, the infamous Iron Man already knows Soldat is a highly trained killer and the former Winter Soldier. There's a difference between knowing somebody is an assassin and realising they've killed your parents though.

Soldat groans, rubbing his eyes with the back of his right hand. He's going to have to meet Tony Stark, the sooner the better. Probably gonna need to apologise too, and then ask nicely for the man to keep Soldat under the radar while he gets his head on straight. Iron Man works with Captain America (you just couldn't leave the war behind, could you Stevie?) so that might be tricky. Thing is, Soldat's sick of fighting. He was sick of fighting two lifetimes back. Steve's a damned idealist, a true believer in Truth, Justice and America, but even as Bucky Soldat had hated war. War was just about killing people who disagreed with you. In his first year on the front before Steve showed up he'd seen most of his unit slaughtered and killed a whole lot of people in return, most of whom were just following orders like he was and trying to survive. It made him sick then and if anything that feeling's gotten worse.

He remembers a whole lot more war now after all; several centuries of it.

If Soldat never has to shoot anyone ever again it'll be a damned relief, but he doesn't think it'll go down like that. HYDRA will want their Asset back; Steve will expect Soldat to still be Bucky and willing to follow him into fights, watching his six; as soon as his identity gets out the government will want his 'unique skills' at their disposal. Yeah, all of that? So not happening. He'll vanish into rural Siberia first and take Ileana with him. They both know how to live out there after all.

Tony Stark has enough money and influence to make governments sit up and take notice; if Soldat can get Stark on his side then getting himself a civilian job will be so much easier. Though before Soldat does that he'll probably need a civilian education, because he has very few transferable skills: precise and in-depth knowledge of anatomy, considerable toxicology experience, a keen understanding of physics, fluent a dozen languages though in half of them his vocabulary is distinctly archaic…

Actually he might not be as disadvantaged as he thought he was. It's just the socio-cultural stuff that's going to hobble him, because while HYDRA introduced him to social media as a means of gaining information on a target, a lot of it read like a foreign language. He has no context for the references, doesn't recognise the quotes and hasn't seen the TV series. He doesn't even know what's been on the news.

Integrating into twenty-first century civilian culture will probably be the hardest Mission he's ever undertaken. Hopefully Ileana will help him out there; which reminds him, he needs to ask her what _she_ wants to do now she's found him.

He's pretty sure 'getting married' is as high on her list as it is on his though. It's the _only_ thing on his list he is absolutely certain of, so the sooner the better. Seeing Stark will probably have to come first though, as beyond his being Ileana's master Soldat would really like to know what, exactly, is going on inside his metal arm. HYDRA has never given him anything that didn't have two-dozen choke-chains attached and this is unlikely to be an exception. If Tony is anything like Howard, Soldat won't be kept waiting very long for answers.

* * *

Translations

_Soldat meu _= my soldier (Romanian);

_Bunicut _= grandfather (informal) (Romanian);

Voivode = prince/warlord (Romanian);

_Dragă_ = darling (f) (Romanian);

_Liebling_ = darling (German);

Datochka = very informal, cutsey Russian diminutive of Dasha;

_Geliefde _= beloved (Dutch);

_Răutate _= evil (Romanian);

_Schatje _= little darling (Dutch);

_Älskling _= love, darling (Swedish);

_Kulta _= darling, treasure (Finnish);

_gra' mo chroi _= love of my heart (Gaelic);

_chérie _= darling, dearest (f) (French);

_ljubímaja _= love, beloved (f) (Russian);

_cari__ño _= love (Spanish).

So maybe our Soldier has a bit of a one-track mind where his Girl is concerned…


End file.
